‘Newman concluded that each month that the war continued in 1945 would have produced the deaths of ‘upwards of 250,000 people, mostly Asian but some Westerners.”‘

I am anti death penalty and anti war. I could not imagine myself ordering the atomic bombs in Japan even knowing what was going on. But I also have a difficult time second guessing the decision to drop those bombs knowing how many people may have died had we not dropped them. That’s F’d up logic isn’t it? We have to kill innocent people to save innocent people, but sadly enough it seems to have been the case…

The deaths of civilians at Hiroshima was unfortunate, as were those in London, Dresden, Manila, Honolulu and everywhere else. But the blame belongs to the Japanese Imperial govt. for starting the war and even that late in ’45 seeming like it would stick it out to the bitter end. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war months earlier than otherwise, saving an estimated 100,000 american lives and millions and millions of potential american and japanese casualties, including those of civilians.

20-20 hindsight lamentations that we could have held off the bomb like that of the moron whose article you linked to are convenient and self-congratulatory. And ultimately useless. Decisions were made at the time based on the information available then, not on what we’ve learned since. Personally I am glad that my grandfather survived the war – he was tasked as part of the naval force supporting the planned Operation Olympic (invasion of Kyushu) and would have been at risk.

On the other hand, I too would prefer a world where a nuclear weapon is never again used. I hope that we can find ways to defuse tense situations like that of Iran and North Korea, and that other emerging nuclear powers like India and Pakistan continue on their responsible trend towards lowering tensions between those bitter rivals.

In a just world something like the Hiroshima and Nagaski bombs would never happen. But this was not
a case of the peace loving people of Japan being savaged by the horrible Americans.

20 million Chinese died in WWII, over 16 million were civillians. Over 200,000 were killed with samuri swords in in retaliation of the Chinese civillians hiding the American fliers from the Doolittle Raid.

“Newman concluded that each month that the war continued in 1945 would have produced the deaths of ‘upwards of 250,000 people, mostly Asian but some Westerners.”

…

“The submarine blockade and the United States Army Air Forces’s mining operation, Operation Starvation, had effectively cut off Japan’s imports. A complementary operation against Japan’s railways was about to begin, isolating the cities of southern Honsh? from the food grown elsewhere in the Home Islands. “Immediately after the defeat, some estimated that 10 million people were likely to starve to death,” noted historian Daikichi Irokawa.”

As screwed up as it may sound, the 200,000 dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have been a small fraction of the number who would have died otherwise.

I read the book Fly Boys about the island of Chichi Jima that Bush Sr. got shot down. Some fliers were captured. At least two were executed. Samuri sword of course, and the garrison commander cooked and served their liver and kidneys.

My grand father was on a small carrier called the St. Lo in the battle of Leyte Gulf. Before his ship was sunk by a Kamakazi plane (and he spent 18 hours treading water before he was rescued) he watched horrified as the commander ordered a group of Japanese sailors in the water machine gunned.

Funny coincidence Kevin, my grandfather served on the CVE Sangamon Bay at Leyte Gulf. He was part of the fire control team that scraped kamikazes off their deck.

Case for Nagasaki? No different from Hiroshima. Japan was still at war, fighting continued. No notification was received by the U.S. of formal requests to initiate an armistice as a step towards unconditional (or any other kind of) surrender. Everything else is revisionist history.

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